Does providing 5-6 year olds with daily 15 minute music sessions impact on their reading attainment?

INTERVENTION: Classes within participating schools will be stratified by school and a random number will be generated for each class within each school. In the case of a two‐form school, the class with the highest random number in the school will be assigned to the treatment group and the other class to the control group. In the case of schools with more than two forms, BIT will do as per step 3 for schools with an even number of forms (e.g. four‐forms). For schools with an odd number of forms (e.g. three forms), the randomisation will be done as follows. Half the schools will randomly be chosen to have one intervention and two control classes and the other half will have two intervention and one control class. If one‐form entry schools are recruited, they will be grouped into a single stratum for the purposes of randomisation. The intervention group will receive the First Thing Music Intervention, comprised of daily 15‐minute music sessions for Year 1 pupils (5‐6 year olds) over the course of three terms. The children will take part in singing games and movement activities, focusing mainly on steady beat, rhythm and pitch. The intervention will be delivered by class teachers who will receive training and mentoring from a team of music practitioners recruited by specialists from the British Kodály Academy. The daily music sessions will follow a Kodály‐based approach, introducing the children to musical concepts through experiences such as listening, singing and movement. These concepts will be constantly reviewed, reinforced and extended through games, songs and exercises. More advanced skills such as written notation, subdivisions of beats, patterns of longer/shorter sounds and awareness of melodic shape by pitch discrimination, will be introduced gradually according to the progress of the children. The control group will not receive any intervention. CONDITION: Academic attainment ; Not Applicable ; Academic attainment PRIMARY OUTCOME: The following will be assessed at the end of the intervention period ‐ the end of the 2019 school year:; 1. Reading ability (phonics, literal comprehension and reading for meaning) assessed using the Progress in Reading Assessment (PIRA); 2. Oral narrative skills (information content, sentence length, grammatical usage and independence), assessed using the Renfrew Bus Story test; ; To account for baseline variation in attainment, the child's Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) will be used. SECONDARY OUTCOME: The following will be assessed at the end of the intervention period ‐ the end of the 2019 school year:; 1. Social skills, assessed using the Social Skills scale of the Social Skills Improvement System (SSiS). This is assessed across the following subscales:; 1.1. Communication; 1.2. Cooperation; 1.3. Assertion; 1.4. Responsibility; 1.5. Responsibility; 1.6. Empathy; 1.7. Engagement; 1.8. Self‐control; 2. Self‐perception of ability to generate and use ideas in their school work, assessed using an adapted version of the ideation sub‐measure of the writing self‐efficacy measure, with significant simplification to make it age‐group appropriate; ; To account for baseline variation in attainment, the child's Early Years Foundation Stage Profile (EYFSP) will be used. INCLUSION CRITERIA: 1. Located in North East England 2. Discussed participation with First Thing Music and signed an MoU detailing the conditions of participation (opt‐out process, pupil data provision and endline assessment, participation in IPE activities, etc.). If there is significant interest from localised areas not in the North East (e.g. Sheffield), music practitioners may be recruited to these areas as well. This will typically require at least 10 schools in a localised area to be recruited in the study. Strong preference will also be given to two‐form entry schools. If the project team are unable to recruit the required number of two‐form schools, other schools (e.g. single and three‐form entry) will be considered after discussions with the evaluation team and the EEF. Schools with an average or above average share (14.1%) of Free School Meal (FSM) children will receive priority in recruitment. As this trial will be randomised at the class‐level, there ar